“Of course, the people of California were pissed, protesting and whatnot. But nothing could be done. No matter how many people camped out and wrote letters, these companies wouldn’t stop. They have contracts. Big, multi-million-dollar contracts that allow them to drill where they want, when they want, and gather as much water as they’re capable of. Problem is, as they gather up all the groundwater, the drought forces them to dig deeper and in other, untouched places. You understand?” Dominic asked.
“Yes,” Jon replied.
“So, what we have,” Dominic slid out another article from the stack, “are companies taking their machines and sticking them in places where they don’t belong.” Yellow dozers and pallets of pipe were pictured beneath the headline WORKERS CONTINUE TO DRILL DROUGHT-RIDDEN SPRINGS DESPITE PUBLIC OUTCRY. Men in neon vests were pictured working on placing water sourcing machines into a forest stream.
“To make matters worse,” Dominic continued, “these guys didn’t even examine the land. No preparation, no surveying, nothing. They just took the pipes and went to work. So, they’re pumping and pumping this water from the ground without the slightest idea of what could be beneath the stream.”
Jon’s eyebrow rose. Lying beneath the stream? He stopped taking sips from his glass of water and placed it on the dining table, trying not to show his anxiety.
“If it wasn’t for one of the engineers that worked at the filtering plant for one of the beverage companies, none of this information would’ve gotten out,” Dominic said, pulling out the DEADLY PARASITE FOUND IN CALIFORNIA SPRINGS article. Below, was a photograph of microscopic organisms. White things on a black background. Pod-shaped creatures with multiple antennas. They looked sort of like pufferfish to Jon. Spiky. Odd.
“It seemed that Mr. Leon Freedman was the only person in the whole operation concerned about what was going through the filtering system. What he found was this organism failing to be flushed out from the machines. Both before and after, this thing was present in the water,” Dominic said.
“Did he tell anyone? I mean, what is it exactly?” Jon asked.
“Oh, he told everyone he could at the plant. He wasn’t sure what it was at first, there was no name for it. He just knew it wasn’t normal. Definitely not something he’d seen before. Usually, the water would go through osmosis or deionization to rid contaminants. This was something new and it seemed the higher-ups didn’t care or, if they did know about it, chose to ignore it. It didn’t help the fact that Mr. Freedman found this out after large quantities of water had been packaged and shipped out.” Dominic sifted through more articles as Jon was absorbing what he’d learned so far.
The water. . . did I… I must’ve…
“Freedman was convinced something was up, so he took matters into his own hands. He began running some tests with the water, seeing how the organisms reacted to certain pressures, treatments, and temperatures outside of the usual filtering process. All on company time might I add.”
“What did he find?”
“Well, the higher-ups weren’t too pleased with what he was doing. Word was getting around about some mysterious organism floating in the water and that Leon was using company time and equipment to decipher it. People were getting worried, complaining. Not that Leon wasn’t complaining enough about the damn parasite himself. They let him go as soon as they caught him in the act. He couldn’t finish running all his trials, so he snuck out as much raw H20 from the stream as he could and began running tests at his home. On rats.”
“The classic method,” Jon said, but still the fear rose.
“That’s right, the classic method. He was determined to get answers. What he found was that these rats would either be knocked out into a vegetative state or straight up killed by drinking this mysterious parasite water. It baffled him, but also caused him to make phone calls, pleading with not only his company but the other big players in the game since they were all taking water from the same source. No one seemed interested and a few even hung up, thinking he was a prank caller.” Dominic was flipping articles all around. It was obvious he had gone over these materials several times.
“Jesus,” Jon said under his breath. Rae shook her head in disbelief at the ignorance of big business.
“It wasn’t until one night he heard the rats squeaking and running around in circles in their cages. Clawing and gnawing to get out. The ones he thought were dead were now more alive than ever. Same for the vegetables. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Crazed live rats. Some even going at each other. Rats biting rats,” Dominic said, showing a gruesome photograph of the test subjects. The rats were bloodied and chewed-up.
Jon scratched his head. Did I drink it? My parents. Are they…?
“But get this,” Dominic said. He flipped another page. “When he flicked on the lights above the cages, the rats began to slow down. After a few minutes, they completely stopped moving and reverted to vegetables again. They were breathing. They were alive. It was the light that seemed to knock them down. So, to test it, he shut off all the lights again and low and behold, the rats started running in a frenzy just like they did before. The fighting with one another revved back up.”
The students at the quad. The two men fighting outside of the library that chased Emily and me.
“That’s why you had me in the light, right? To see how I’d react?” Jon asked.
“Yes, that’s our only way to see if you’re crazy or not,” Dominic replied. “As silly as that sounds…”
Rae moved her hair away from her eyes.
“So, cut to a few weeks later. We started getting reports around the West Coast of the flu, right? Only it’s not the flu we’re all familiar with. No stuffy nose or headaches or throwing up. We have people starting to collapse. Outright falling over, falling into a deep sleep. Almost like mini comas,” Dominic said.
Deep sleep. Comas. Mark. Kevin. Images flashed in Jon’s mind of the college library. The broken vending machine.
“But the media was calling it the flu. The ‘New Flu.’ The ‘West Coast Flu.’ The latest flu trend if you will. That’s what they sold it as. Nothing to see here but some out of the blue illness that they pushed as being airborne. You got it through coughing or sneezing onto one another. The problem was they were making shit up,” Dominic said. “They were being bought out to say all this instead of reporting the violent outbursts of the victims.”
“Slow down a sec,” Jon interjected, “you’re saying that at this point the bottling companies knew what it was? That they were the ones causing the sickness?”
“They had to have known something was up. Leon sent letters, emails, videos, photographs, everything. The CEOs didn’t want to acknowledge it. Thought they’d run their water well dry with this kind of PR. They must’ve spent millions on all the mainstream outlets. CNN. Fox. MSNBC. You name it. However, the one place they couldn’t stop him was YouTube and underground news sites.
“He’d upload a video detailing everything he’d discovered with his experiments. It’d get taken down and he would have to re-upload it. Every graphic detail. Everything of what it did as far as he could tell with the rats. Luckily, it picked up steam and went viral just as the ‘New Flu’ was hitting the East Coast in great numbers. People would download the video for themselves, share it on Facebook and Twitter. It made the rounds, but the damage had already been done and more was yet to come. The people weren’t rallying around the videos enough to really do anything at that point.”
Mom. Dad. Was there water in the house? When did I last drink it? Why am I not sick? Grandma had bottled water in her basement, did she drink it? Her end table. She must have. . .
“So, what is it then? What is the parasite and how does it cause this sleep, this frenzy? What’s the science of it?” Jon asked, almost shouting. He’d listened long enough. He wanted the answer, craved it.
“I’ll show you,” Dominic said in a cold tone. He stood up from the piles of reports and grabbed a black Maglite flashlight from the
counter, next to a box of paint masks. Dominic handed one to Jon and put one on himself, snapping it around his nose and mouth. He looked like a surgeon.
Rae began to cry.
Chapter FORTY-NINE
The Woman in the Basement
Dominic led Jon back into the dark basement with the Maglite. The beam illuminated the prisoner seat where the cut tape still stuck open around the legs. They walked past tripods of switched-off LEDs and saw what Jon once could not see. Boxes were thrown around. Papers. A torn-up, red leather couch with stuffing peeking from the rips. Plastic bottle caps littered the carpet next to piles of empty water bottles. A treadmill next to a TV that dangled halfway off its mount on the wall beside a Pittsburgh Steelers poster.
Blood. There’s always blood.
The two of them approached the far end of the basement where the white wood storage door stood with a splatter of blood and, somehow, a clean handle. A circular push lock was engaged on the top of it. Same as the one in Jon’s basement.
Beside it, another turned off LED light on a tripod stood with its bulb facing the wall.
Dominic’s beam wobbled as he aimed it at the door. His voice crept from his mouth in sobbing breaths.
“Jon, what I’m about to show you is very hard for me and I ask you to listen to everything I say.” Dominic took deep breaths like he was having a panic attack behind the mask. He spoke in a whisper. “Stand behind me, I’m going to unlock the door and when we get inside, I’m going to switch on that light and pull it inside. Don’t make any sudden movements. We have to do this very carefully, alright?”
“Ok,” Jon said in a whisper. He remembered the faint thud he heard from beyond the wall. Part of him felt sick with the thought of finding his family back there. His mother and father held prisoner like Jon was, only this time they were mad with the water parasite if that truly was the case. His mind flashed back to finding his grandmother in her basement.
Jon hoped he wouldn’t hurl inside his paint mask.
“Take this,” Dominic said and handed Jon the Maglite. He grabbed the LED light by the neck of the stand and switched on the bright light against the pale wall. “If the smell is too much for you, just tell me. Rae and I did our best to clean up, but still, pace yourself.”
With his other hand, Dominic clicked out the lock in the handle, using the fingernail of his thumb. Then, his thumb came down on the grip before he jerked the storage door wide and moved the floodlight inside. The LED blasted through the darkness. Jon saw the concrete room light up in front of Dominic. Beyond him, a woman sat on the unfurnished floor, staring at them with duct tape covering her mouth. She rose as the light struck her face.
The same smell that came from the washer room at Jon’s grandparents’ house was finding its way into his olfactory glands. This time it was worse. Not only were there scents of urine, but excrement. Shit. A stale, harsh fume. The worst gas station, roadside, public bathroom you’d ever find yourself in was right here in the Cooper’s basement.
The woman rushed toward them in a jerking hop. Jon could see her wrists and ankles were bound with the silver tape as well. Infected, she’s infected. Why didn’t Dominic bring his crossbow? The light from Maglite was lost in the brightness as it shook in Jon’s hands.
“Step back, Jon!” Dominic shouted and lunged forward into the bound woman. Wrestling her to the ground, he held her beneath the spotlight as she jerked and jived. “Shut the door!” Groans beneath her taped mouth tried to escape its sticky trap. She tried to squirm away from the light, but Dominic dragged her back into the ring. He wrangled her like he was a crocodile hunter.
Jon shut the door and noticed that the inside handle was covered with more of the duct tape. This shit is everywhere, huh? It covered the lock with so many layers of tape that Jon didn’t know what to do, so he left it shut without a secure click of any lock. He turned back, panicking.
With more time beneath the squint-inducing light, the woman began to lessen her lashing out. She became weaker. Tired. Dominic was handling her with more ease as her eyes blinked slower and slower. Just like Kevin by the ambulance, Jon thought as the woman’s fight finished beneath a soaked Dominic. The rats.
“Jon, come here. I need you to just hold her arms down. She won’t be any trouble for you,” Dominic said, wiping his forehead with the back of a hand. His shirt was drenched in sweat. “Don’t worry about the flashlight.”
Jon put down the Maglite and ventured into the spotlight of the LED lamp. He knelt on the storage room floor, above a frizzy-haired woman who was bound by rolls of tape and blood. Her mascara streaked her cheeks beneath sleepy eyes. Thankfully, it wasn’t Jon’s mom. Unfortunately, it was someone else’s.
As Jon got closer to her, she opened her eyes as wide as they could be. Dark brown, almost black eyes stared into Jon’s soul as if she was shocked awake by his presence. It forced him back a step.
“It’s ok,” Dominic said, out of breath. “She’s gonna be out cold in a second.”
Jon grabbed her wrists. The tape was sticky with blood. Dominic gripped her ankles as she let out her final movements before her eyelids came down and slumber took over. The jerking subsided.
“See this? Just like Leon Freedman found with his rats and all the people that collapsed with the flu, they had a reaction to sunlight, any light,” Dominic said, panting. He wiped another bead of sweat from his worn face. “Whatever you do, don’t take off your mask unless you want to puke all over yourself. We tried to clean her up the best we could but-”
“Dominic, is this your mom?” Jon asked, already aware of what the answer would be. Behind the filth, he could see the resemblance to Rae. She looked like any other upper-middle-class mom donning a pink sweatsuit, except now it looked ripped and torn as if she had a rough morning jog.
Dominic nodded. He spoke with a depressed sound. “It is. We’ve been keeping her down here for the past few days, keeping her alive, trying to maybe reverse the effects of the parasite. So far nothing has worked. We’ve tried to force-feed her Tylenol and Benadryl. We tried giving her more water, both tainted and untainted. Nothing has worked. When the power shut down, Leon’s work went with it. We have no clue if he’s working on a cure or is even still breathing at this point.”
Mrs. Cooper’s chest rose and fell beneath the floodlight’s shine, just as if she was a rat or a student from White Haven College. Dominic reached over to her face and peeled off the dirty duct tape from his mother’s mouth, trying not to rip the skin from her lips. Her mouth slung open as her sleep continued in persistent deep breaths that came close to snores.
“The bug has been labeled as the ‘Aggressive Nocturnal Parasite.’ You drink the tainted shit and the parasite gets into your bloodstream. Before you know it, in the next few minutes, it’s swimming upstream, all the way to your amygdala. Then the sun goes down and all hell breaks loose,” Dominic said with his eyes locked on his mother’s.
Jon had learned all about the amygdala throughout his college courses. The limbic system. Fight or flight. The brain is a powerful organ not to be tampered with, especially not with something as invasive as a water parasite.
“So, it overrides her body? The parasite controls her adrenaline levels?” Jon asked. It was starting to come together in his mind.
“Right, it emotionally hijacks her brain. That’s why when you find she’s awake, she’s screaming, lashing out, biting, throwing a fit. She has no regard for what she says or does anymore. She has no recollection of it either. All she has is pure, unhinged rage coursing through her veins. Every time.”
“But why does it only occur in darkness? What is the light doing to make her fall asleep like that?”
Dominic let out a breath through his mask as he looked up into the blinding light. He couldn’t look for more than a few seconds before turning back to his mom. “I’m not sure. Some people said it may have to do with the depth of where the parasite was found in the stream. It’s only active at night or, at least, when it perceiv
es night. Like an owl, it’s nocturnal.”
Jon and Dominic fell silent for a moment. The only sound was Mrs. Cooper’s breathing.
“I want you to grab the flashlight,” Dominic said. “I’m gonna show you what happens.”
Jon was shocked at the request. “Maybe we shouldn’t. I’ve seen plenty and I-”
“I think you should see how it all works. The more you see, the more you’ll know how to deal with it. Ok?” Dominic sounded like he was in pain.
Jon looked down at Dominic’s mother, then back up at him and said, “Alright. Only if you’re sure.”
“I am. Don’t worry, we won’t let her do any damage. I’ve done this before. If anything happens, we just drag her back into the light.”
Jon got up from the cement floor and moved behind the LED, picking up the Maglite which was still clicked on. He was sweating behind the mask as his mouth felt moist.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Dominic said with his grip on his mother’s wrists. “Turn off the light and keep the flashlight pointed down. When she starts to wake up, you can shine it on her. It won’t be enough to put her back asleep, but just enough so we can see what the hell we’re doing.”
Wanting to get it over with, Jon switched off the big LED. The only light left was the mini spotlight of the Maglite that aimed down on Jon’s shoes.
“Alright, get ready. A few moments are all it takes. Come over here with the flashlight and get ready to grab her feet for me,” Dominic said.
Jon’s heart wasn’t ready. Perhaps he should’ve braced himself before switching off the sleep-inducing light. He began to panic, unsure if this was such a good idea. With his luck, this would be the time that Dominic’s mother takes her son out with a bite to his neck.
No, no. Please. God, no. More flashbacks of White Haven College struck Jon. He saw Mark grabbing onto his ankle. Jon had to shake the memory away.
“Mmmm. Hhhhhhhmmmm,” Mrs. Cooper groaned in the dark. Jon began to aim up the light to her face when Dominic stopped him.
When the Sky Goes Dark Page 24
